Toby Landau (Essex Court Chambers) will give a talk today at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law's Friday Lunchtime Lecture Series on "Investor-State Arbitration: Politics, Legitimacy and the New UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules."

Adam Roberts (Univ. of Oxford - Law) will give a talk today at the Faculty Transnational Law Colloquium at the Center for Transnational Legal Studies on "The Equal Application of the Laws of War: A Principle Under Pressure."Peter Spiro (Temple Univ. - Law) will give a talk today at the University Cincinnati College of Law Faculty Colloquium on "An International Law of Citizenship."

The Mexican Yearbook of International Law has been published by the Institute of Juridical Research from the National University of Mexico for the last 9 years; we receive articles from different countries. Submissions are now invited for volume 10 of the Review, which is to be published in January 2010.

Articles of 25-35 pages on topical issues of international law are welcome. Submissions in French, English, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian are accepted.

The closing date for submissions is 10th July 2009. Submissions must be written in the Mexican Yearbook Style, details of which are available on the website. Please send an email with your name, year and contact details in the body with an electronic copy of your article attached toamdi_iij@yahoo.com.mx.

Kevin Jon Heller (Univ. of Melbourne - Law) will deliver a lecture today at the T.M.C. Asser Institute on "Situational Gravity Under the Rome Statute."

Chandra Sriram (Univ. of East London - Law) will give a talk today at the International Law Association (British Branch)-University College London Faculty of Laws International Law Seminar on "Power-Sharing, Armed Groups and Contemporary Peace Negotiations."

This article has a simple hypothesis: Selectivity in international law increases as international relations become more symmetrical. Conversely, international law becomes more universal as asymmetry grows. This relation holds true during the modern period. Its existence in turn supports the theoretical claim that the content of international law reflects the rational interests of those actors that make it.

Consider first international relations. A simple narrative, seriously incomplete but good enough for present purposes, would go something like this: From the end of World War II to the collapse of the Soviet empire a bipolar superpower competition dominated international relations. There followed a period of U.S. hegemony, but more recently significant Chinese, European, Indian and Russian challenges to the United States have complicated that structure. The details do not matter, neither the dates, nor the extent of U.S. hegemony when it existed, nor the number of the new great powers, nor the precise relative influence of each. What matters is that the basic structure of international relations underwent a transformation in the latter part of the twentieth century and now appears to have changed again.

Next consider competing trends in international law, that toward universality and that toward selectivity. Universal international law applies equally to all states. Selective international law means that states vary in what rights and obligations they recognize as well as how to allow them to be enforced. In the extreme case of selectivity the content of international law and its enforcement depends entirely on the identity of the state in question. If the recognition of international law reflects the rational interests of states, then international law should trend toward universality during times of hegemony and toward selectivity during periods of multipolar great power competition. Conversely, if international law does not conform to this pattern, then something other than the rational interest of states must explain its content. Much more is going on, of course, but this simple hypothesis suffices to ground an inquiry into the nature of international law as a creature of, and dependent on, international relations.

Developments in international law since World War II are consistent with the claim that selectivity increases as international relations become less asymmetrical.

In recent years, the rise of transnational regulatory networks (TRNs) has attracted the attention of international law scholars. Advocates of TRNs contend that, by cooperating directly with their counterparts abroad to address common regulatory issues, national regulators are creating a revolutionary system of effective global governance without centralized world government. This Article advocates for a more cautious approach to this phenomenon. Based on a theoretical analysis of TRNs, it argues that they may be successful in overcoming relatively simple problems of international regulatory coordination where state interests converge. However, TRNs are less likely to succeed when faced with more difficult regulatory issues where, for example, the choice of a specific policy has distributive implications or states have incentives to defect from common standards. In such cases, their effectiveness is undermined by the numerous domestic legal and political constraints faced by national regulators and by the institutional incapacity of TRNs to monitor or enforce the rules they adopt. To support this theory, this Article analyzes three TRNs-in international securities regulation, banking, and antitrust-widely seen as successful, and shows how the institutional weaknesses inherent in TRNs have limited their effectiveness. It concludes that ambitious claims regarding the transformative potential of TRNs are overly optimistic, and that future scholarship on TRNs should be more sensitive to the political aspects of international regulatory cooperation and the intrinsic limitations of informal governance structures.

As a growing number of States receive recommendations from the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), it is increasingly important to clarify the legal extent of continental shelf limits and the content of continental shelf jurisdiction. Given the critical importance of seabed resources such as petroleum to countries seeking energy security and the potential future uses of biological organisms, many stakeholders including States, private industry and environmental groups have a keen interest in the delineation of the limits of the continental shelf beyond 200nm and its subsequent regulation. This half-day conference brings together government officials, academics and practitioners to examine the United Kingdom's submission to the CLCS, analyse key legal issues associated with the CLCS submission process, and to look at the legal content of a coastal State's jurisdiction over its continental shelf beyond 200nm.

More than ever before International Humanitarian Law needs to find new solutions to new types of conflicts. The current state of the fight against terrorism is without doubt one of the new problems facing international society and one of the concerns of International Humanitarian Law. This volume offers reflections on the international legal theory of terrorism, international responsibility, the obligation to prevent terrorist acts, terrorism in armed conflicts, the responses to terrorism by regional international organizations and the legal limits to the fight against terrorism. The contributors consist of academics (and politicians) from Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon and Israel, as well as from Spain, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and a representative for the Organisation of American States. The book thus contains a wide, multidisciplinary debate, with an emphasis on a Mediterranean perspective. In addition to examining all aspects of international terrorism, the objective of the symposium which gave rise to these essays was to establish some guidelines, in the form of a Declaration, to serve as the basis for the UN’s High Level Group for the Alliance of Civilisations on the subject of international terrorism. This overall objective was achieved with the adoption of the Huelva Declaration for an Alliance of Civilisations against Terrorism, the text of which is included at the end of this book.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Today, a Panel established by the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body issued its Report on the case China - Measures affecting the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights (DS362). The United States brought the complaint. The full Report can be found here. An excerpt containing just the Panel's conclusions and recommendation can be found here. A summary of the case can be found here.

This Article addresses the increasingly important role of administrative guidance in interpreting the United States' international treaty obligations. The relationship between administrative guidance and treaties raises important issues at the intersection of international law, constitutional law, and administrative law.

These issues are explored in the context of the United States' extensive tax treaty network. Tax treaties play an important role in a global economy, attempting to reconcile the complex and ever-changing internal tax laws of different countries. The Treasury Department is considering the increased use of administrative guidance to interpret the meaning and application of tax treaties, particularly in response to the increasingly sophisticated business structures and cross-border transactions utilized by multinational corporations.

This Article considers the weight that courts should give to unilateral administrative guidance when interpreting tax treaties. The Article concludes that Treasury's traditional ad hoc approach based on informal technical explanations is entitled to little, if any, deference in interpreting previously negotiated bilateral agreements between sovereign nations. However, the Article identifies certain limited circumstances where formal Treasury regulations might enable the Treasury Department to influence the application of previously negotiated tax treaties without violating the United States' obligations under these treaties.

Freedom of the seas and passage rights is a highly topical subject for the international community that cuts across a broad spectrum of scholarly disciplines and maritime operations. The contents of the book include in-depth analysis of current international and regional approaches to freedom of navigation, transit passage through straits used for international navigation, archipelagic sea lanes passage, scientific research and hydrographic surveys in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), military surveys in the EEZ, as well as vessel source pollution and protection of the marine environment. Many of the chapters describe measures in place at multilateral and regional levels to improve information sharing and operational coordination. This collection will especially appeal to those concerned with freedom of the seas and passage rights. The CD accompanying the volume includes important documents such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea as well many PowerPoint presentations delivered at the conference. It also includes a draft index to the multi-volume series United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982: A Commentary. This book contains the edited papers and associated documents from the 32nd annual Virginia conference held in Singapore, January 9-10, 2008. Presentations were delivered by government officials, senior naval and coast guard commanders as well as by leading jurists and academics with impressive expertise in the law of the sea.

Michael J. Dennis & Andre M. Surena, Application of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in Times of Armed Conflict and Military Occupation: The Gap Between Legal Theory and State Practice

Philip Leach, The Chechen Conflict: Analysing the Oversight of the European Court of Human Rights

Conor McCarthy, Human Rights and the Laws of War under the American Convention on Human Rights

International Commercial Arbitration is an authoritative treatise providing the most complete available commentary and analysis on all aspects of the international commercial arbitration process. This completely revised and expanded edition of Gary Born's authoritative work is divided into three main parts, dealing with the International Arbitration Agreement, International Arbitral Procedures and International Arbitral Awards. International Commercial Arbitration provides a systematic framework for both current analysis and future developments, as well as exhaustive citations from all leading legal systems.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

A call for papers has been issued for the third quadrennial international conference on Comparative Private International Law, to be held at the University of Johannesburg, September 9-11, 2009. Here's the call:

Topics

Papers must include a comparative element and should deal with one or more of the following:

(a) Jurisdiction in civil and commercial cases with an international link

(b) Applicable law / choice of law

(c) Recognition and enforcement of foreign judgements and foreign or international arbitral awards.

Title, Abstract, and CV

Please send the (provisional) title of your proposed paper to Prof J L Neels at jlneels@uj.ac.za before the end of February 2009, an abstract of the content of the paper before the end of March 2009 and a final title before the end of May 2009. Please add a short curriculum vitae to your first email. If you are interested in attending the conference without delivering a paper, please send an email to the same address.

Publication

The conference papers will not be published by the university. However, authors are welcome to submit their papers for consideration for publication in the Journal of South African Law. Please send the relevant article to the editor, Prof J C Sonnekus, at jsonnekus@uj.ac.za. Authors are welcome to publish their papers elsewhere but are requested to indicate that the paper was read at a conference at the University of Johannesburg.

This volume examines the jurisdiction, both contentious and advisory, of the ICJ as a specific permanent international court or tribunal but also brings together in one book the examination of the jurisdiction of certain other tribunals, not excluding most of the other four tribunals or groups of tribunals examined in Jurisdiction of International Tribunals by the same author. Material relating to them is expanded, re-examined and brought up to date. Hence, This volume covers the jurisdiction of: (i) the World Court, i.e., the ICJ and PCIJ — both contentious and advisory jurisdiction, (ii) the leading International Administrative Tribunals, (iii) the ECHR, (iv) ICSID tribunals, (v) the WTO Panels and Appellate Body, and (vi) the ITLOS. The six systems for the judicial settlement of disputes chosen to be examined in this work are by far the most important in the modern era and deserve close attention.